


red in tooth and red in claw

by feminist14er



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Season 2, post-season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 07:43:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7565824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feminist14er/pseuds/feminist14er
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're not supposed to be able to live when your daemon dies, but somehow, Clarke is still here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	red in tooth and red in claw

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the Bellarke AU Week!
> 
> Title from Of Monsters and Men.

It isn’t supposed to happen like this. In fact, Clarke is pretty sure nothing like this has ever happened, and she doesn’t have an explanation for it: people aren’t supposed to be able to live without their daemons. And yet, here she is, cradling Aeolus in her arms as he struggles to breathe, and it feels like an iron fist is gripping her heart, squeezing it until it breaks. She thinks she’s dying, but she has no mortal wound that would account for her agony.

Instead, she’s in the tunnels of Mount Weather, desperate in the loss of the alliance with the Grounders, and all she sees is blood burbling up out of Aeolus’s mouth, and her desperation and heartbreak feel like they’re threatening her, drowning her under the weight, pulling her down, and she doesn’t feel like she has a grip on reality, but she’s conscious, and suffering –

And Octavia and Helios are there, looking at her now, watching as she sobs into Aeolus’s cream fur, and Octavia’s disdain is turning to horror, and Clarke can’t look up, can’t do anything, can barely breathe, and it’s only when Helios touches his beak to Aeolus that he crumbles into Dust, and Clarke can feel the final wrench.

She’s not supposed to be living if her daemon is dead.

\--

When Bellamy and the forty-six emerge, she doesn’t have anything left to feel. She’s afraid she feels dead and cold inside because Aeolus is gone. She’s afraid she’s never going to feel again, which is why she takes one look at the gates, kisses Bellamy on the cheek, and leaves.

During the months she’s gone, she decides that she doesn’t feel dead inside. She feels lost, adrift, but not dead. She feels a deep cavern, and she thinks that’s the part of her that ripped away when Aeolus died. But then, she thinks that it probably doesn’t have anything with Aeolus dying, and has everything to do with being Wanheda. The two are so inextricable, she can’t tell where Wanheda begins and Aeolus ended.

(In her darkest nights, she thinks that Wanheda was born the second Aeolus burst into dust, that he died because she rotted from the inside out, that she inflicted so much pain and death on others that it killed her soul).

\--

When she arrives in Polis, it’s not discussed that she no longer has a daemon. The Grounders have a different connection with their daemons, and they’re all so much larger, they’re often away, outside the walls of the city. There’s enough going on that no one really says anything, and she’s not sure if they think her daemon has also developed a longer range, or if they just don’t care to say anything.

She hears whispers every now and again, but she can’t tell if they’re whispering behind her back, or if they’re whispering because she’s severed, (or, honestly, if it’s because of her closeness with the Commander), but she tries not to think too much about it.

The first time it really hits home is when she sees Bellamy again, frantic, looking for her, and she can see that Nyx is by his side, and her eyes are intent on Clarke, searching her for recognition of Aeolus, and she feels a phantom fist clench down hard on her heart again, and she’s not sure if it’s because Nyx and Aeolus were starting to be friends, that they ran to each other just as much as Clarke ran to Bellamy the last time she felt joy, or if it’s because she feels hollowed out, like she doesn’t have the energy to be what he needs her to be right now, and she’s so, so tired of disappointing everyone, and maybe, just maybe, she can do something good here, far away from the judgment of her people.

When Nyx growls in her direction, though, she feels it like a punch to the stomach, feels it just as much when Bellamy glares at her, and it isn’t a look of cunning dislike or distrust, not like he used to give her; no, this is a look of betrayal, and anger that she’s not sure she can fix.

\--

She feels the phantom fist in her heart all over again when Lexa dies, Tellervo fluttering by her side before her wings give out and she crumples to the floor, dissipating into gold Dust.

\--

It’s only days, maybe weeks at the most before she and Bellamy are reunited, before their people are recalled from the City of Light, reunited with their daemons, but to Clarke? To Clarke it feels like months, maybe years. She feels like she’s dragging herself through a quagmire, and everything she ever read about being severed meant that you lost the core values of yourself, that you lost the ability to be a true person; daemons, after all, are souls, and without one, you cannot be whole.

She thinks, though, that at her heart, she is the same. She wants good for her people; she wants to survive, she wants them to prosper and be happy.

If only they could have the chance.

Once they make it back to Arkadia, some number less than they were before, they start planning.

(Clarke hugs Raven, first, because everyone is hailing her as the person who brought down the City of Light, but Raven – she’s really the one who did it. She’s the one who does everything, and Clarke knows the downsides of people attributing credit to you, but she’s thankful for Raven now. They’re going to need her more than ever, and Clarke thinks, as she watches Vulcan twine around Raven’s feet, that _anyone_ should pick Raven first). 

Clarke and Bellamy depart as soon as they have a plan, and it’s not easy between the two of them – there’s too much unsaid, too much bloodshed, too much that Clarke, especially, feels she has to atone for. Every time she starts, though, the cavern inside her swoops up and steals her words, and there’s no amount of looking at Bellamy and Nyx, and longing to tell them everything – there’s no amount of that, no amount of remembering the touch of his hand in hers, that will make her feel like even her apologies are worth anything.

They’re better than they were, but they’re still two broken, battered people, and she doesn’t even know how to fix herself, let alone the damage she’s done to everyone around her.

Still, they’ve banded together (and they argued about it for _hours_ , whether or not they should split up; Clarke, against her better judgment, the yawning hole in her heart screaming at her to never let him out of her sight again, still felt like, as two of the leaders, they should split up. Bellamy never said it in so many words, but every way he looked at her told her she was full of shit. She was only a leader if their people trusted her, and there are innumerable reasons that they just – don’t), and if they walk in silence most of the time, it’s not the worst. They set up camp in silence at night, Nyx and Bellamy whispering into the night, and Clarke doesn’t listen in. She doesn’t. Every time she thinks about it, she feels bile creep up her throat, feels ugliness clawing at what remains of her soul.

\--

The thing is, they’ve got a long journey. When it’s nuclear meltdown, it’s not exactly like it’s in their backyard (and thank god for that, although at least they would have had more warning, she guesses). She and Bellamy point things out to each other, and she talks him through some of the plants she got used to using when she was on her own.

She doesn’t talk about it, and he doesn’t ask.

She _does_ want to ask about Gina, wants to know about the person he loved, how she died. (She doesn’t think about him asking about Lexa, knows that he despised her for breaking their trust, for keeping Clarke when he needed her).

Finally, one night, she breaks the silence, looking at him over the flames. “I’m sorry. That I wasn’t there, that I didn’t come back when you asked. I thought I was doing the right thing, but it was selfish.”

He doesn’t turn to look at her; the only reason she knows that he even heard her is that Nyx looks at her down, ears flat against her head. It’s the angriest she’s ever seen the ocelot, and it makes another piece of her curl away inside.

Finally, he says, “It’s late. We’re getting close, and we should rest. Will you take first watch?” 

She nods wordlessly, watches him turn away from her, swallows down the lump in her throat. She doesn’t hear him talking to Nyx that night.

\--

It’s the next morning that it wanders out of the woods. It’s scraggly looking, almost like it has mange, and she recoils from it at first. They haven’t seen dogs on the ground yet, although she’s sure some of the Grounders have them. It’s rude to ask your daemon to hunt for you unless it’s a matter of survival; using packs of dogs is much more sensible. Still, if this is a dog, it’s only barely that. It barely comes to the middle of Clarke’s calf, and she can’t tell if it’s full grown and malnourished, or a puppy and malnourished.

When Nyx sees it, she growls low in her throat, attracting Bellamy’s attention. He pauses, watching it, then shrugs. “We can’t keep it, if you’re thinking about it.”

Clarke scoffs. “I definitely wasn’t.” (Although, really – it’s pretty pathetic. She almost wants to help it, but she’s never taken care of a dog, never even really _liked_ dogs from what she saw of them in old vids on the Ark).

Bellamy shrugs again, before loading up his pack and taking off. Clarke follows, taking care to mask the signs of their campsite before she leaves, and checking behind her regularly. 

For all their awkwardness, they’ve fallen into a pattern, one where he keeps track of what’s happening out in front, and she keeps watch over their backs. It’s not the most predictable arrangement, given that she thinks she’s betrayed him enough times, but he must trust her enough, because they fall in like this every morning.

She thinks they’ve left the dog behind by mid-day. She hasn’t seen any sign of it, no rustling in the bushes behind them, and she feels a stab of sadness, even though she’s relieved that she doesn’t have to take care of one more thing.

By nightfall, she’s still seen neither hide nor hair of the thing, and as she eats some jerky, she tries not to think about it. Bellamy takes first watch, and she curls up on her bedroll, missing, not for the first time, the physical comfort of Aeolus curled against her chest.

\--

When she wakes in the morning, having served the midnight watch, she’s briefly confused. There’s warmth at her back, and before she thinks about it, she’s scrabbling, the cavern in her body screaming that maybe she’s not alone anymore, maybe some act of divinity has brought Aeolus back to her, and she reaches out –

And it’s the fucking dog, of all things. 

She can’t help the choked sob that rises to her throat, and as much as she tries to fight it back, she feels tears streaming down her face, and she hasn’t cried in so long, hasn’t allowed herself the freedom to cry. She’s barely an adult, but it’s fight to survive down here, or die, and she’s not ready to die, not yet. But then there’s this darkness, this blank space inside of her, an empty void she can’t ever fill again, and it’s just _too much_.

She shoves the dog away from her, and tries to ignore its whimper, tries to ignore the way it crawls back to her, hunkered on its belly and ears back in submission.

It makes her feel like a monster.

“Clarke?” she hears, softly. She hears the rustle behind her, feels the butt of a head against her back, and she shrinks away.

“Don’t,” she says. “Please don’t.”

He stops, doesn’t touch her. “Clarke, you can keep the dog if you want to.”

She laughs, and it’s sharp, bitter, nothing like the laugh she gave when they first landed, when she saw the glories of the ground. “I don’t _want_ the fucking dog!” she snaps, trying to will the tears away, furiously wiping at her face.

The dog whines, presses closer to her, and she shoves at it again, feels another tear in the hole where her heart should be when it cries out.

“Clarke,” Bellamy says sharply. “Stop.”

“Stop _what_ , exactly?” she asks. “It’s just a fucking _dog_ , I don’t want it, it’s _nothing_.”

She can hear, feel, something – the dog is curled up, whining, and it’s breaking her a little, but she _doesn’t want it_. It’s not Aeolus, it’s _just a dog_. She doesn’t want a pet. She wants her soul back.

She feels him crouch down next to her, although he keeps his hands away from her. He’s tactile, she knows, and he knows how much touch soothes her, so she can only imagine what it’s costing him not to touch her – but. He doesn’t.

“Clarke, can you look at me?” She wants to shake her head and bury her head in her arms, shake like a baby until she calms down, but – they don’t have the time for her to have a full meltdown. She looks up at him, tries to keep her sobs to a minimum. He nods at her, gives her a lopsided smile. “Clarke, the dog probably just wants food. If it wants to follow us, it’s fine. It doesn’t mean anything, okay?”

She thinks that he’s trying to soothe her, and because it’s Bellamy of all people, she’s actually moderately soothed, but – she also thinks he’s probably lying through his teeth. Still, it’s just enough to get her to settle. She nods at him, but doesn’t look at the dog. She thinks Nyx may actually be next to the dog, which is a far cry from yesterday, but – she doesn’t want to think about it. Not even a little. Instead, she offers her hand to Bellamy, silently asking him to help her up. He takes her hand, squeezes it, and pulls them up together.

\--

The dog follows them for the next couple of days, and Clarke starts to get a little bit more accustomed to its presence. She still doesn’t interact with it at all, but she sees it, now, when it creeps through the shrubbery behind them, and it’s less jarring when it comes out of the bushes at night to sit by their fire.

She never touches it.

Instead, she watches as Bellamy feeds it pieces of jerky, or whatever bird they’ve managed to snare the day before, watches the way the dog wags its tail, they way its coat starts to come in, striped brown and black. She thinks the dog is filling it, but the dog has only been with them for a few days, so it could be her imagination.

Nyx never touches it either, but doesn’t seem bothered that Bellamy does, and honestly? Clarke doesn’t know what to make of the entire thing.

The dog hasn’t slept with her again, and she refuses to feel betrayed by it.

\--

They spend close to a week more traveling, and Clarke is certain now that the dog is growing under Bellamy’s care, that it’s starting to flourish. It trots along behind Bellamy during the day, but doesn’t sleep near him at night. Clarke actually isn’t sure what the dog does at night, and she tells herself she doesn’t care. If Bellamy wants to bring home a stray, it won’t be the first time, and it surely won’t be the last. It’s no sweat off her back.

When they reach the nuclear plant, Nyx wanders in ahead of Bellamy, and the dog stays outside. Bellamy has told Clarke the dog is female, but she still doesn’t have a name, and Clarke isn’t sure why Bellamy hasn’t named her yet, but continues to tell herself she doesn’t care. Regardless, the dog stays outside, her ears pinned against her head and her tail between her legs, and a part of Clarke (the terrible part, the part she hasn’t come to terms with yet) takes a small vindictive pleasure in the dog’s uncertainty, its fear.

They’re far outside the range of radio contact with Arkadia, so when going through and shutting down the failsafe switches, slowly turning everything off and powering it down doesn’t work like it should, they can’t call in Raven for help. And when there’s a small explosion, Clarke is separated from Bellamy, and she’s addled by it, can’t really see or hear, and it wasn’t the most important switch that failed, but later she’ll think that she hit her head pretty hard, because her vision is swimming and the breath is short in her lungs, and she doesn’t even really feel like she’s in her own body, now, just swimming, drifting away –

And then she’s being dragged, and if she had the cognizance, she’d scream and fight back, because if there’s one thing she knows, it’s that being dragged through supposedly empty buildings always spells trouble, but she’s too tired to fight back, and she trusts Bellamy, he’ll make sure everything else powers down –

\--

When she wakes, it’s to someone shaking her, and she groans, starting to sit up before realizing her mistake and turning over to retch.

“Jesus, Clarke, you scared me,” she hears, and Bellamy’s next to her, holding her hair back as she heaves.

“What happened?” she asks hoarsely, reaching for the water he’s handing her to clear out her mouth.

“I finished shutting down my switches and went back to meet you, but you never showed up. The dog came and got me and brought me to you. What happened to you?”

Clarke looks around, pausing when she meets the dog’s eyes. It’s looking at her with an expression akin to pride, its ears perked and its tail wagging against the ground as it sits politely in front of her. She glares at it.

“I think the last switch I was working on blew a fuse,” she says. “I don’t remember much.”

Bellamy’s mouth tightens. “How far did you get?”

“I think it was the last one?” she shakes her head and regretting it. “I don’t remember.”

He nods. “I’m going to go check. You stay here.” He looks at the dog and says, “She doesn’t go anywhere. Guard." 

The dog doesn’t move, but her tail keeps wagging, and Clarke’s irritation grows as she waits. She tries not to doze off, but she’s not sure she’s successful. Based on her nausea and the limited memories of the explosion, she thinks she probably has a concussion, knows she should say awake, but everything hurts and she’s so _tired_.

Her eyes are drooping shut when the dog yips, and Clarke’s eyes snap open. She glances around, looking for a problem, and her eyes catch on the dog, who perks her ears in Clarke’s direction.

Every time Clarke starts to fall asleep, the dog wakes her up, and it is fucking _annoying_ to Clarke’s pounding head. When Bellamy walks back out, she says “Your dumb dog is keeping me awake.” 

Bellamy looks at the dog and grins. “She’s not my dog,” he answers. “Come on, let’s go make camp. All the readings indicate it’s powered down.” He reaches for Clarke and lets her lean on him as she limps. Nyx pads next to Bellamy, and the dog trails them to Clarke’s growing annoyance.

\--

She remembers watching a vid on the Ark that showed a girl throwing things at her dog when she needed it to run away. It’s honestly what she wants to do now, but she’s worried that even that much is acknowledging that the dog has a special attachment to her, and she _doesn’t want it_.

For the first time in the two weeks since the dog started following them, she sleeps against Clarke’s back, and Clarke stiffens at the feeling when she wakes up, rolls away, but doesn’t panic like she did the last time. Bellamy wakes her every two hours to make sure she’s okay, and the dog looks like the sun has risen every time Clarke makes eye contact with her.

\--

Clarke really doesn’t begin to appreciate the dog until they’re attacked by a small group of Grounders, likely part of a village that Luna mentioned to them. Clarke was fairly sure that they hadn’t strayed into their boundaries, but they’re here now, and their greetings apparently didn’t go over well. Nyx is tangling with the bear daemon of a gigantic man, and Clarke and Bellamy are back-to-back, fighting off two other men. When Clarke trips and goes down, she’s afraid Bellamy will do something stupid to protect her, but she hears a snarl instead and sees the dog leap for the throat of the man bearing down on her, sees her jaw flex, and watches as the dog pulls him down and kills him.

It’s honestly a horrifying sight; Clarke has never been around an animal that defended her by killing, and it’s bone-chilling, but it gives her to the time to gather her wits and get back up before finishing off her other opponents. 

Bellamy and Clarke light a pyre later, and for the first time, Clarke reaches out and pets the dog, just a touch on her head, a thank you. She feeds her a piece of jerky later that night.

\--

She and Bellamy have a long way back to camp, but there’s no rush. For all that ALIE made it seem like the nuclear power plants were a great threat to the remnants of humanity, it’s functionally about flipping switches and powering down computers; with Raven’s directions, it’s not that difficult. It requires a lot of travel, and it requires their team to split up again, but the actual work isn’t that challenging, which is why Bellamy doesn’t feel badly about taking a little bit more time to get home.

He’s been watching Clarke and the dog, remembers the blind panic, the devastation in Clarke’s face when the dog appeared, and he doesn’t really know what to believe, to be honest. He had to fight down his revulsion when he found out that Aeolus died; like everyone else on the Ark, he’d been taught that no one survived without a daemon, or if they did, that person was corrupted, lost.

But then there’s Clarke. Clarke who has made some of the most frustrating, awful choices Bellamy’s ever seen – some that he’s helped her make, and some that he’s disagreed with to the bitter end, but – she’s still Clarke, and as much as he doesn’t want to acknowledge it, that’s a beautiful thing. She’s been devastated by everything they’ve done, but he can’t tell where her devastation over her actions begins, and where her devastation over the loss of her soul ends. He wonders if they’re one and the same, but there’s no one to ask.

And then the dog appears, and no one gets a new daemon, but then, no one survives without a daemon, and there’s nothing that he’s ever read that talks about this, and maybe there’s a shaman or a healer among the Grounders who would know, but the Grounders look at Clarke with mistrust, and there’s no getting around that right now.

And the dog doesn’t act like a daemon. For one thing, he can tell she’s just a pup, malnourished and suffering, and probably her mother died, or she’s the runt and was abandoned, because she’s not healthy, but she’s surviving, and if that’s not a reflection of what he sees in Clarke, he doesn’t know what is. But the dog doesn’t leave them, not even after Clarke shoves it away, tries to force it to leave, and he can see how the dog’s presence wears on her, sets her on edge, but the dog avoids her after their first encounter, preferring Bellamy’s company, and he doesn’t touch the dog much (it feels sacrilegious somehow, even if it’s not a daemon), but he feeds it and talks to it sometimes.

Nyx doesn’t talk to it, and he’s not sure what to make of that, but he doesn’t ask her, either.

When he sees the dog standing over Clarke, tail waving and ears perked, he can’t help but want to laugh a little. The dog clearly makes Clarke so uncomfortable, but (and Bellamy doesn’t really know shit about dogs, okay, but he’s read books) the dog seems like it doesn’t care, just like every other dog Bellamy’s ever heard of. The dog is clearly proud, and Clarke is clearly annoyed, and after feeling relief that Clarke is okay, he can’t help but feel a little amused, and – he’s not sure the last time he felt like laughing, but he feels just a slight tickle inside, the tiniest glimmer of laughter, and it takes him by surprise.

So there’s no rush to get back to Arkadia, really, and if he takes some detours, Clarke doesn’t seem to notice, or if she does, she doesn’t say anything. She still touches the dog rarely, but she doesn’t shove it away, either, and Bellamy feels something like reassurance at that, however ridiculous that might be.

The dog wakes up next to her, and Clarke feeds her now and again, and the dog doesn’t seem to hunt, but she doesn’t lose weight, either, and it’s another mystery Bellamy can’t quite solve, but letting his brain dwell on it too much gives him a headache trying to figure out what’s real and what’s happening, so he mostly tries to put it out of his mind.

And then Clarke shows him the spots where she used to hunt, where she was living from time to time, and it’s the closest she’s come to talking about what happened to her while she was gone, and her shoulders are hunched forward in guilt, and Bellamy’s confused, but when he touches her shoulder, she shrinks away and the dog whines, and Bellamy doesn’t know what any of it means.

Nyx is the one to finally say something, which surprises Bellamy. She talked to Aeolus after the first week or so on the Ground, but she rarely speaks around Clarke now, and Bellamy doesn’t dwell on that too much, either. Still – “Clarke,” she says, and her voice is unusually soothing. “We will help you bear it.”

Clarke turns around and looks at Nyx, then at Bellamy. “That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? I already made you bear everything else on your own. It’s – it sound childish, but it doesn’t seem fair to ask you to bear more.”

Nyx blinks, and this time it’s Bellamy who answers. “We’ll help you bear it, Clarke. It’s time to stop punishing yourself.”

She reaches out, looks like she’s going to touch his cheek, but lets her hand drop. “And you? When will you stop punishing yourself?’

He’s not sure whether to laugh or cry at that. They’ve always been transparent to each other, he guesses, and this is no exception. He ducks his head, shaking it slowly. “It’s not the same.”

She grasps his hand this time, squeezes. “Yes, it is,” she says. “Whenever you’re ready.” She drops his hand then, turns to lead them away.

\--

He tells her about Gina a couple of nights later. It’s starting to cool again, the first hint of fall in the air, and he can see his breath as he talks. There’s distance between them, Nyx coiled at his feet in front of the fire, the dog curled up several feet to Clarke’s left, and he’s watching her across the fire, watches as she braids her hair back, and she looks so _normal_ , so human, and there have been times in the last six months that he’s not been sure what she is, exactly, but human doesn’t seem to touch it, for better or worse.

But now, here she is, fiddling with her hair, putting it back into the braid he saw when they first landed, and she looks young, barely like the adult she is. It’s the quietness in her face that tricks him into talking to her, feeling like he has to purge some part of his soul, or he’ll be overwhelmed and drown in it again.

“I had a girlfriend, while you were gone,” he says, and winces. “Not like before, not like – “ he trails off, remembering how he acted when they landed. “She was too good for me.” He sighs, remembering joking with Raven about Gina, how she _cared_ about him, just the way he was.

Clarke tilts her head. “I’m sure she was good,” she says. “But I don’t think too good for you exists. You’re a good man, Bellamy.”

He ducks his head, and when he looks back up at her, his face is wrecked. “I don’t know how you can believe that,” he says. “I don’t know how you can believe that either of us is a good person.”

It breaks her heart, seeing the raw emotion on his face. She wants to reach out to him, but there’s still too much between them for her to feel okay about it. “None of us has made the best choices, Bellamy. We’ve made the choices we have to, the choices that seemed right at the time.” She sighs, looks over at the dog, gives a self-deprecating laugh. “Maybe we’re not good people,” she says. She meets his gaze, haunted, across the fire. “But I trust you. I _trust you_ , Bellamy, and that’s good enough for me.”

He feels so many emotions crawling up the back of his throat, and he hasn’t ever felt like atoning like he does now; hasn’t ever felt like he has to atone to Clarke, of all people, the person without a _soul_. “You don’t know what I did while you were gone,” he whispers.

“And you don’t know what I did. Or you do, and you’ve chosen to overlook it.” He can see the frustration written on her face. “You’re not a martyr, Bellamy. We’ve all made our choices, and now we have to live with them.”

She wants to be good enough to stay, to support him, but she can’t, not right now. Not when the burden of her own choices feels so heavy. “You should go to sleep. I’ll take first watch.”

She feels like her heart is breaking again as she turns away from him, but she doesn’t look back until she hears him rustling around and finally, hears silence. When she looks to the dog, it looks back at her reproachfully, and she rolls her eyes.

\--

She sleeps terribly that night, and when she wakes up in the morning, she glances over at Bellamy, says, “I’m sorry about the way last night went. It’s just – if you think you’re a bad person, I can’t even imagine what you think of me.”

Bellamy glances up, and it’s not surprise that’s written on his face, but it’s something like that. “Clarke, you act like you’re the only person who’s done terrible things down here. Sometimes you take the name Wanheda, and assume it’s all you are. I don’t understand what I have to tell you to make you believe that’s not all you are.”

Even though she knows he’s trying to help, it still feels like a slap. “What else am I, exactly? Everything I touch dies. Every person I love dies. Nobody trusts me now, not even you.”

“It’s not always _about_ you, Clarke! Sometimes you have to just stop wallowing in your own despair, and let someone else remind you that you’re good enough, too! If I’m not allowed to be a martyr, why are you?” he shouts. Nyx is twined around his ankles, ears perked forward and teeth bared, and Clarke has no idea where the dog is, but if it’s feeling anything like she is, it’s cowering.

“Goddammit, Bellamy, I don’t have a _soul_ ,” she yells, feeling the breath leave her lungs at the admission. “I don’t have a fucking _soul_ , and I feel like I’m drowning under the weight of everything. I shouldn’t even be _alive_. Do you see how people look at me? Like I’m an abomination? Maybe it doesn’t give me the right to wallow, but it sure as hell gives me the right to look at you and know you’re good, even if I’m not. How can you even think that I’m a good person, when everything I’ve done is so awful that my soul died, left me alone here?”

“Did you ever stop to wonder if Aeolus died because you gave up on him? Because you gave up on thinking of yourself as redeemable?” he asks, softly.

“Fuck you, Bellamy,” she hisses. “How dare you.” She wants nothing more than to stomp off into the woods, but she can’t, and she knows it. She shakes her head. “Let’s just go home, okay? Let’s just go home.”

She turns around and tries to surreptitiously rub at her eyes as she does. She never thought she’d see the day when Bellamy made her cry, but it’s here now, and as much as she cares about him, it doesn’t mean that they can’t inflict the harshest wounds on each other as a result.

\--

They don’t talk for the next couple of days, and it wears on Clarke. They continue to do their same routine, and it’s not that they’re far from home, but it almost seems like they’re agreeing not to go home, not until they’ve made up. For one thing, they can’t present as a divided front. For the other – well, Clarke feels like this is just another punishment they’ve made up for themselves, but they can’t quite seem to stick to it.

Finally, after nearly a week of silence, when Clarke hasn’t even heard Nyx and Bellamy talk, she sits across the fire from him and starts talking. “Lexa died in my arms. I watched her daemon burst into dust, watched as she bled out from a mistake one of her own people, someone she _trusted,_ made.” She looks up at Bellamy, and she feels like she’s scraping her skin raw telling him this, trying to excoriate the sins from her body. “I don’t know if I loved her, or loved the idea of her – “ she breaks off, shakes her head. “Maybe I love too easily. Maybe that’s why everyone I love dies.”

Bellamy watches her silently, and it is Nyx who finally speaks. “Not everyone you love dies, Clarke.” Clarke cocks her head at her, watches as Bellamy glares at her. “There are forty-six people alive that you love. People that you would, and have, picked first. They’re alive.”

Clarke doesn’t have an answer for that, not right away. When she opens her mouth again, she fights against the tears in her throat to answer. “Do they? Do they love what I’ve done for them? In their names?” She looks at Bellamy as she says it, but he doesn’t answer.

Nyx walks around the fire, comes to sit in front of her. “You would have to ask them,” she says, then cocks her head. ”I think they love you in spite of it. But you left before they could decide, and maybe that is what you feel like repenting for.” She turns around and walks back to Bellamy, where she starts washing her whiskers.

She doesn’t feel lighter, but she thinks it’s maybe a place to start. When she glances back at Bellamy, he’s watching her again, but his gaze has softened.

“We could punish ourselves forever, Clarke. The question is – do you forgive yourself?” he asks.

“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” she whispers.

He nods. “But you’re trying.”

“I want – “ she breaks off, coughs out a laugh. “I want to know that _you_ forgive me,” she says, and she hates herself a little bit for the admission, for feeling that way at all. She shouldn’t need the validation from him, but they’re two peas in a pod, and if they only see darkness in themselves, they somehow see light in the other.

“You told me it was time to stop punishing myself,” he says. “Maybe we can do it together.” 

She smiles, just a little. “Together,” she says.

\--

When they get closer to Arkadia, they radio to check in with Raven.

“You’re the second to last to respond,” she says. “Everyone else has been successful, and I’m just waiting on Miller and Monty, but they went farther afield than you did.”

They keep walking towards home, but when they stop outside the gates, Clarke looks over at him, and asks, “Did you ever think about leaving?”

Bellamy doesn’t look at her. “Every day. I thought about coming after you every day.”

She ducks her head. “No, I meant – just to get away.”

He looks at her then, shakes his head. “You asked me to take care of them,” he says with a wry smile. “I don’t know if I did it the way you would have, but I tried.”

She squeezes his hand. “You did.” She waits for a minute, watches the gates. “Do you think they can spare us a little longer?”

He looks over at her again, his eyebrows high on his forehead. “What are you thinking?”

She fidgets, just a little. “Maybe we can stop punishing ourselves if we take a break from bearing the weight of everyone,” she says. “Not running away. Just giving control over to someone else for a while.”

He nods slowly, and Nyx twines around his ankles. “Do you want me to ask Raven?”

She nods, pleased, and when Raven teases them, she fights back a blush. Still, she thinks that they need to the time, and maybe Bellamy needs the time most of all.

\--

They wander on their own for several days, keeping up the routine they’ve made. It’s continuing to get cooler, and Bellamy is surprised when Clarke takes him to a bunker and throws a panther pelt to him, and wraps herself in what looks like a furry jacket. When he raises his eyebrows at her, she just shrugs.

“I made it through winter last year, didn’t I? Niylah helped with the skinning, when I didn’t know how.”

He nods, still surprised at this side of Clarke, the side that hated herself but chose to survive in spite of her own self-loathing.

When they settle for camp that night, the dog several feet from Clarke and sprawled out on her back, Bellamy asks, “Do you think your time away helped you at all? Did it help you forgive yourself?”

Clarke snorts. “Before I went to Polis, I think it didn’t make me feel any worse. Maybe I invested a little too much in the idea of being Wanheda, I don’t know. I didn’t feel worse. I felt worse after being in Polis, after seeing Lexa die. I don’t know how to forgive myself for anything that happened once I went to Polis, but I – “ she breaks off. She wants to hide when she admits this, but her own pride won’t let her, so she looks Bellamy head on, instead. “I don’t know what I could have done differently. I wish I’d come home with you, but I don’t think it would have helped.”

Bellamy looks at her for a long moment, and when he finally responds, his voice is raw. “It would have helped, Clarke. It would have helped _me_.” He scrubs at his face with his hands, and again, it is Nyx who speaks for them.

“We helped kill three hundred Grounders, Clarke. They don’t trust us because of us, not because you’re Wanheda, or because you don’t have a daemon anymore.” Bellamy is looking at Nyx reproachfully, but daemons can keep talking even when their humans don’t want them to, and Nyx seems more prepared to heal than Bellamy. “What if you’d been there? Would you have let us do that?”

Clarke glares at Bellamy. “I don’t think it’s fair to pin that on me. You made your choices. Maybe I would have stopped you if I’d been there. I would have wanted to help you, wanted to take care of you after Gina died. But don’t you dare pin that on me. We both know full-well you’re capable of making that choice on your own. And so am I.”

“Then why are you so ashamed of letting the rocket fall on the Grounder village? Because you did it in my name?” Bellamy asks angrily.

“I’m ashamed because I let hundreds of people die so Lexa and I could survive. And yes, I did it to protect you!” She says, gesturing wildly. “And I’m never going to be okay with having made that decision and escaping, but I _am_ okay with having made sure you survived. You surviving meant other people survived, and if that’s mercenary of me, I don’t know how to feel badly for that anymore.”

They sit in silence for a while longer, each of them licking at their wounds. Finally, Clarke looks at the dog, and looks at him. “I’m ashamed because, as awful as my mother is, she never would have done that. And my father would _never_ have made the decisions I have. I’m not proud of what I’ve done, and I don’t think anyone else should be. That’s why I’m uncomfortable being Wanheda. I don’t want my actions to be legendary. They’re awful.” The dog moves closer to Clarke, whining softly, and Clarke looks at it.

“Maybe I did give up on myself,” Clarke says, looking at Bellamy again. “Maybe that’s why Aeolus died. Or maybe people from the Sky aren’t meant to have daemons on the ground, if the decisions we have to make are so soul-crushing. But you’ve managed, in spite of everything. And I don’t know what it means that I don’t have Aeolus anymore, but I miss him, and I spend so much time wondering where I went wrong that I’ve been abandoned like this,” she says, and the tears are starting to flow down her cheeks against her will. She brushes at them angrily. “I hate that I wonder how, after every awful thing each of us has done, how I’m the only one who lost my soul. I hate that, but I can’t help wondering.”

She buries her face in her arms, and there are many things that Bellamy can withstand, but watching Clarke fall apart isn’t one of them. He moves next to her, rubs at her back, feels as the sobs wrack her body. “Clarke, hey, shhhh,” he says. “We might never have an answer for that, but it doesn’t make what you’ve done, who you are, any more or less awful than the rest of us. Even if I don’t agree with every choice you’ve made, I know that you did what you thought was right. That’s something to feel proud of, if nothing else.”

“Is it?” she asks, her voice muffled against her arms. “Why should I be proud of doing the wrong thing, even if I thought it was right?”

His heart aches for her, and it’s been a while since he felt a lot of compassion for Clarke; they’ve been through too much, and he’s stood side by side with her through a lot, even when he’s angry with her, but her own lack of faith in herself and her ability to lead – she’s a changed person from the girl who challenged him at every step in their early days on the ground.

“Clarke, you’ve tried. You’ve tried to make peace whenever you can. You’ve tried to save us, whenever you can. If it doesn’t always succeed, you’re _trying_.”

She laughs, wipes her eyes. “Do you tell these things to yourself, too?”

His features darken, and he shakes his head. “It’s not the same.”

“It _is_ though,” she says, looking him right in the eyes.

“I wasn’t trying to make peace when I led the assault on the grounder encampment,” he says bitterly.

She rubs at his arm. “You made a mistake. We’re all making them, and here, they have bigger consequences. You were also trying to keep people safe.” 

“Was I?” he asks, looking up at the stars. “Or was I just trying to get revenge however I could?”

She tucks her head against his arm. “I don’t know,” she says. “Only you know that. Or maybe only Nyx does,” she says, looking over at the cat. Nyx is curled around herself, her eyes sparkling in the firelight. Whatever her opinion on the subject, she’s staying quiet. 

Clarke sighs. “I forgive you, Bellamy. I hope you can find a way to forgive yourself." 

He tucks his nose into her hair, breathes her in. “I believe in you, Clarke. I trust you.”

It’s such a small moment, but she feels his belief in her filling some of the void in her heart, and the breath she exhales is one of relief.

\--

For the first time in several weeks, they sleep near each other, just close enough to fall asleep holding hands. It’s the best Clarke has slept in weeks, and when she wakes, it’s to the cool morning sun on her face, slowly warming her.

Over breakfast, she can feel Bellamy’s gaze on her. “Do you really think we aren’t good people?” he finally asks.

She gives a short laugh. “I’m not sure we’re the best of judge of that, honestly,” she says, smiling slightly at him. “We’re not morally corrupt, if that’s what you’re asking, but that’s a long way from thinking we’re good people, I guess.”

He hums in response, eating some of the nuts they’ve gathered. “What would make us good?”

“Gods, Bellamy, it’s pretty early in the morning for this sort of philosophy,” she jokes. Still, when the dog nudges at her arm reproachfully, she sighs and looks back at him. “On my better days, I think we’re too young, and grew up in a place that was too fucked up to really be good, and I take some comfort from that. On my worst days, I think we might never be good, because we grew up in a violent, controlling world that tried to seem idyllic.” She thinks for a minutes. “I don’t think we’re making choices that are any worse than the choices the grounders make, but we’re very young, and our actions are being memorialized, and I think that’s pretty fucking awful.”

She looks at him. “What do you think?”

“I think I was raised to always think of my sister before myself, to get by whatever way possible, and I think that’s pretty fucked up,” he answers wryly. “I’d love not to look at my childhood as an excuse for my behavior, but – our lives have been fucked up in some pretty strange ways, I guess.”

She laughs. “That’s probably true. But maybe we’re finding ways to not be fucked up?”

He smiles at her. “Maybe.”

\--

They keep going for another couple of days, and they avoid talking about their choices for the longest time in a while. She’s not sure they’re making peace with themselves, but they’re not making themselves feel worse, and she thinks, just maybe, that they’re doing something like healing.

If nothing else, they’re getting closer. After the last time they really talked about their demons, she gets close to him at night. They no longer sit on opposite sides of the fire, in direct opposition to each other. Instead, she sits next to him, listens when he talks about the stars.

She tells him a little bit about what she learned from Niylah, how she’d really like to have time to learn more from the Grounders, and he listens, petting at her hair sometimes.

It reminds her that he’s her anchor in this world, and whatever their faults, they are better when they bear them together. And, it reminds her that there’s an electricity to being around him, a pleasure in being touched, and touched by _him_ in particular. She was happy with Niylah and Lexa, and she certainly felt very strongly for Lexa, but the feeling around Bellamy is just a strong, and now, lacks the desperation she’s felt with all of her partners on the ground.

It’s good, she thinks, and safe.

When they get soaked in a downpour one afternoon, she leads them to another bunker, drags him down with her, and laughs at the way Nyx looks when she’s wet and harried. Bellamy laughs with her while Nyx hisses at him, and it’s when Clarke finally gets herself under control that she realizes that Bellamy’s shirt is stuck to his skin, and she has trouble swallowing as she looks him over.

She clears her throat and looks away. “We should, uh – we should get dried off so we don’t get too cold,” she says, moving away from him.

He looks confused for a moment, reaches out to touch her arm, and it’s like she’s been struck by lightning as the feeling of attraction goes through her body. She looks up at him wide-eyed, and when he lets go of her arm, it’s only so he can step back and start to take off his jacket, and then his shirt, never dropping eye contact.

She can feel her breath going short as she watches him undress, and it’s not that she’s never seen him without a shirt before, but it’s been a long time, and his body is different now, marked and scarred, just like hers is, and he’s letting her see every last part of it.

He’s smiling ever so slightly as he comes toward her, brushes her hair back from her face and breathes her in. She feels intoxicated, like she’s had too much moonshine, at the proximity of him, and when he brushes his nose along her face, she feels her eyes flutter closed. She catches one of his hands, brushes her lips across his knuckles (knuckles that have seen so much violence, she thinks, but are still gentle as they brush along her face), and backs up.

She sees trepidation enter his gaze, but before he can change his mind, she’s letting her jacket drop to the floor and pulling her shirt and bra over her head before meeting his stunned gaze.

And Clarke knows, okay, that her boobs are pretty great, but the open look of lust in his eyes is driving heat straight to her cunt, and she wants him to stop looking and _touch her_. She feels like it’s taking forever for him to take her in, but suddenly he’s right in front of her, his chest up against hers and making her shiver as her nipples peak in the cool air. His hands are on her hips and his mouth is just hovering above hers when she moves the final distance to catch his lips with her own. 

It’s not like fire races down her body at the feel of his lips against hers, not even when his tongue brushes against her lips, seeking entrance, or when he licks into her mouth. It’s not like being on fire, but it feels like _home_ , in the most comforting and hot way possible (and okay, she’s probably not thinking with her whole brain right now, but she feels light from the inside out, happy and safe and god she _wants him_ ).

They make out standing up like that for a while until they break apart, and she leads him over to the battered couch that lives in this particular bunker, and when she turns to him again, he’s right there, mouthing along her jawline and her neck, teasing his hands up her sides to just under her breasts, right under where she wants him to touch her, and she mouths at him sharply, biting along his jaw until he laughs and cups her breasts in his hands, feeling her sigh underneath his touch. 

He bears her down to the couch then, aching to get his mouth on her breasts, and when he does, licks his way down his sternum and bites gently at one nipple, he’s rewarded with her moan and the way she grabs at his hair, tugging gently and rocking just a little underneath him, urging him on. He gives the other breast the same treatment before working his way down her body, and staring up at her when he gets to the line of her pants. She meets his eyes, and her pupils are blown wide and her face is flushed, and it’s not a look he’s ever seen on her, but when she nods at him, nudges him with her knee to keep going, he ducks his head and smiles the way he did so many months ago on Unity Day, and it fills her with a flush of joy and pride, seeing the happiness on his face, in his body.

When he gets her pants down, he mouths along the crease of her thigh, teasing her, and she wants this to last, but he’s so close to where she wants him, and she’s so wet from being like this with him, happy and full of desire, and she doesn’t say anything, just starts working her breasts, and when he groans against the inside of her thigh, she feels a flash of triumph at his response to her body.

And then he’s parting her, licking a stripe from her cunt to her clit, and it’s all she can do not to writhe against his face. She’s not surprised that he’s good at this; she doubts he had much time for partners on the Ark, but he made up for lost time once they landed, and she doubts that some of his partners had time for ineptitude, and he’s walked in a way since that makes her think that he knows, that he’s good at this.

As he works her over, licking at her, figuring out what she likes, she keeps touching her breasts, flicking her fingernails over her nipples, the sensation adding to the work Bellamy’s doing, winding her up. When he rubs two fingers inside her, keeps licking at her clit, she grabs at his hair, his ears, scrabbling for purchase. She can feel his smile against her, feels when he has to stop licking at her to pull himself together, and then he’s pressing her into the couch with his other hand and grinding his hips down, and it’s unreal how hot she thinks this is, and it’s that thought and just the right crick of his fingers that has her coming hard and fast, her moans coming short as she arches against him.

He eases her through her orgasm, rubbing gently until he can feel her getting too sensitive before pulling his fingers out and licking them clean. She works to catch her breath before ducking her head to look at him and pulling him up for a kiss, licking the taste of her out of his mouth.

She can feel him hard against her thigh, and she’s not sure she can come again, but she wants him to, and she reaches for the button on his pants. He hisses a breath when she touches him featherlight, and as much as she wants to jack him off and suck him off, she also wants him in her, and she pushes him back to she can help him strip, appreciating the strong lines of his legs.

When he’s naked, she pulls him back on top of her, mouths at his jaw. “I want you in me,” she whispers, and grins at his groan.

She lines him up, and she’s wet enough that he slides in with no discomfort, even though it’s been a while since she was with a guy. He fills her pleasantly, and even if she doesn’t come again, she knows he’ll feel good.

She lets him set the pace, gently scrapes her nails down his back, and the jagged sensation seems to drive him a little wild. He bites along her collarbone, sucking in at least one spot until she laughs and taps at his back to get him to stop. “You can mark me up later,” she promises, and she watches as his eyes darken and his thrusts come a little more erratically, and she’s surprised but it’s working for her, and she can tell if she comes it won’t be as sharp an orgasm, but when he reaches down between them to thumb at her clit, she doesn’t ask him to stop, arching against him instead and meeting him thrust for thrust, and she can hear the sound of them coming together, and fuck she thinks it’s hot as a whine builds in her throat and the sensation becomes too much, and she goes over the edge as Bellamy’s thrusts get sloppy and she can feel when he stops, pulsing inside her, and gods, she doesn’t know if she loves him, but he’s a good man, a good partner, and she’s so happy she’s here with him, like this.

She pets down his spine as he comes down, softens inside her. She wants to stay and wrap herself in his warmth, but she has to pee, so she pecks him on the cheek and wanders off to the largely unfunctional bathroom (but, gross as it is, she’s left a bucket here, and that’s fully what she intends to pee in, since she’s not going out, naked, in the rain).

When she gets back, he’s rustling around for some blankets having pulled his shorts on, and she sneaks up behind him and hugs him. He stiffens for barely a second before relaxing back against her, and she presses her lips to his back.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get some rest.” He turns to kiss her on the top of her head, and she follows him back to the couch, twining her arms around him and burying her nose in his chest when they settle in.

“I’m glad it’s you,” she says. “I’m glad I’m here with you. I don’t – that might not be enough, but – “

“It’s more than enough, Clarke. Sleep,” he says, stroking along her side. “Sleep.”

\--

When they wake up in the morning, they’ve barely moved. It’s not surprising, considering the width of the couch, but Clarke is pleasantly warm and not uncomfortable, in spite of their limited space. She blinks open her eyes carefully, and smiles softly when she sees Bellamy first. His eyes aren’t open yet, but his hand is idly and sleepily untangling her hair, and she presses a kiss against his chest.

(They might not be good people, she thinks. They’re certainly not the best. But she thinks, just maybe, that they deserve happiness anyway, and the feeling she has in her chest? It’s eclipsing the darkest regions of the cavern left behind when Aeolus left, and she knows that she could have kept going without Bellamy, but she also knows that she will be so much better with him, and if she doesn’t have a soul, they’ll figure it out).

When they start to rise for the day, they both still, Clarke against Bellamy’s chest, when they see Nyx and the dog curled around each other. Nyx hasn’t avoided the dog entirely; that would be impossible given Bellamy’s earlier predilection for feeding her, but unlike with other daemons, Nyx has not touched the dog, and seems wary of it.

Still, when Nyx blinks open her eyes, she touches her nose to the dog’s, and when she looks back at Clarke, she says, “Zephyr. Her name is Zephyr,”

Clarke thinks her neck almost breaks with how fast she glances back at Bellamy. Daemons are always the ones who name other daemons, so if Nyx is naming the dog - ?

Bellamy glances down at her and then looks back at Nyx. “So, does that mean - ?”

“It means her name is Zephyr, and she is Clarke’s,” Nyx replies, ever ambiguous.

“But I don’t have a daemon,” Clarke says. “And you can only name other daemons.”

Nyx gives the cat version of a shrug. “She is yours. Make of it what you will,” and if that’s not mysterious, Clarke doesn’t know what is. 

Strangely, though, she thinks, as she and Bellamy get ready for the day, each puzzling over this new development, it bothers her less, knowing what the dog is. And when she calls for it, Zephyr’s ears perk up and she comes right to Clarke’s side, no questions asked. She doesn’t speak, still, but Nyx is right – she is Clarke’s, and Clarke is hers, whatever that means.

When she and Bellamy get Nyx and Zephyr up through the hatch and see the sun shining on the wet forest around them, she looks at him and smiles. “Ready?” she asks.

He leans over to kiss her quickly. “Ready,” he says.

And maybe it’s not right, for her to feel like her soul is back now that she can lean fully on Bellamy, maybe that’s not healthy. But for the first time in a long time, she thinks there’s a future for them, and it’s a good one.


End file.
